Particulars: A Blank Lisa Blank Tale
by proudgirl
Summary: A look into the history of Sarah Walker, starting from her infancy. How did she come to be who she is now, and who *is* she exactly? Written in short mystery novel form. May possibly become AU Alternate Universe when Season 2 begins.
1. Lisa vs the Ceras

Disclaimer: All storylines/characters that have appeared in "Chuck"-verse up until this point (publish date) are not of my creation and belong to NBC. All others (storylines/characters) are 100-percent figments of my (possibly) terrifying imagination.

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On the least particular of summer days, Kay Beatrice Cera found herself weeding, by hand, through the pathetic expanse of pebbled soil in her front yard. Moments like these always made her sigh, still wistful she missed out on some golden opportunities to marry a man who might know a thing or two about landscaping. Inside the house (white, but no picket fence), the television was – naturally – parroting mindless coverage on Reagan's campaign. Quentin liked to leave politics blaring in the background when he water-colored.

"Keeps my mood neutrally pissed," he had cheerily responded, knocking over a cup brimmed with mud-swirled water and neutrally cussing until he ran out of deities to desecrate.

_My better half,_ she had mused, sighing another of her wistful sighs before handing him the mop. On this unparticular day, she was disappointed to find that life – or _her _life, at least – was always changing yet ever the same.

So it came as something of a surprise when an unfamiliar vehicle – a sports car? She hardly knew – screeched to an agonizing halt at her curb, momentarily interrupting her depressive pebble-sifting and irking her in the process because she resented unsubtle modes of transportation. Stranger still was that Kay thought she might recognize the woman now emerging from the offensive automobile, except that it couldn't be who she thought it was and the confusion of it all just made her fear for her own sanity. _Fucking heat stroke_, she cursed, wanting to return to the sifting but – upon second-viewing – realizing that she had been right.

"Aggie?"

The other woman was now only a few feet away (and nearing), smiling a little tentatively as she approached Kay with a fidgety bundle in her arms.

"Hello, Kay."

For the first time in hours, Kay hiccuped.

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"Wow, you still do that." A smile played tug-of-war at the corners of the Aggie's mouth as she watched her friend down a third mug of water.

"What? I haven't. In…days." Kay was indignant. "What are you doing here anyway? I thought you forgot all your friends."

"That's not true."

Kay attempted a sneer. "Did he leave you?"

"Who?"

"Your man. He ditched, huh?"

"No, he's…" Aggie hesitated. "It's complicated. Listen, I need your help."

Kay swiped a look at the athletic baby still huddled close to Aggie's chest. _Kick, gurgle, gurgle, wave._

"Nuh-uh. I'm not gonna be your baby-sitter." _Gurgle._

"It will just be for the weekend, and we'll – I'll pay you." _Kick._

"Why me? I haven't seen you in…you haven't been around. I have a life too, you know." _Gurgle._

"Please."

Something about her tone unsettled Kay, and for the first time since her old friend resurrected, she felt something other than bile and loathing rise within her. Pity, maybe, but whatever the case, it wasn't enough to make her budge. Except…_Gurgle. _Damn cute babies: "Fine."

"Thank you."

"Quentin's not gonna like this." But, as she awkwardly folded her arms around the little bundle – a _girl _bundle; the best of its kind – that, for some reason or other had chosen her finger in replacement of a pacifier, she smiled (quite despite herself), and secretly decided that it might not matter what her husband thought. It would just be for the weekend anyway. She sighed.

"I'm sorry. For your trouble." Aggie held out a neatly clipped stack of bills. "I can't afford to write checks, and I thought cash might be better anyway, so – "

"I'm not gonna take your money, Aggie." She looked at her friend, almost warmly: "What's her name?"

"Margaret. Margaret Lisa Payne, but…we call her Maggie."

"Okay, well you go do what you gotta do. Maggie'll be fine here." She smiled at the baby. " Won't we, Maggie? Ooga-boog…"

If she hadn't been so beside herself with a different sort of nauseating behavior, Kay might have noticed a change come over the other woman, whose face suddenly registered a kind of tragic fear only other parents could fully recognize. With her thumb sweeping the golden curls edging over Maggie's forehead, Aggie kissed the child's right foot briefly before turning abruptly toward the front entrance of the house. Kay finally noticed.

"Aggie?"

She stopped. "Yes?"

"Are you ever gonna tell me what this is about?"

"God, I hope so."

"It was good to see you, Aggie."

"Well…don't miss me too much." Aggie smiled, this time radiantly unveiling two charming, ever-so-slightly bucked front teeth.

Then she was gone.

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He ended up surprising himself and flooring his wife when he (kinda, sorta) fell for the little goober. After so many years of it being just the two of them, Quentin naturally assumed a baby would fuck up the ambience.

And it – she – did. He just didn't mind it.

Quentin Cera was not a man of few words. He liked to talk, and he loved to listen. To himself. Talk. So it broke his stride a bit when he found that the baby gave him a run for his money. She didn't talk, of course – too young for that – but she sucked up all the attention in the room, and he had gotten used to being the center of his wife's love and affection. Tonight, as he grumbled about the surge in gas prices ("A dollar and fifty-one for a tank of car food? Hell, if it wouldn't cost me half my life's earnings, I'd drive over to D.C.and give Carter an ass-whupping myself."), he discovered he had lost his audience to a more subtly engaging character in the room.

"How long is she gonna leave her here? Kay?"

"What?"

"Your friend. Did she say how long – "

"Just for the weekend."

"Okay, well, I might be painting the house in a few days, so it probably wouldn't be too good for the baby."

When Quentin was just a little boy, he stumbled across a good read on Pablo Picasso, whose early years were marked by indefatigable support from his own father. By the time Pablo turned thirteen, his father – himself an artist – had ceremoniously handed his own brushes over to the prodigious son, deeming him the superior artist. Quite excitably, Quentin had related this bit of information to his own father, who responded by handing _his _son a brush and a bucket of whitewash for their fence; far more Tom Sawyer than Pablo Picasso. It was the elder Cera he cursed, now, whenever he found himself drenched in the deadly aroma of house paint; Quentin Cera was a professional, well, house-painter, but he still preferred "ex/interior designing."

"Do you wanna hold her?"

"Hm?"

"Can you hold Maggie for a second? I have to get dinner."

_Damn. _"Yea, okay. Just, uh, leave it – her – there and I'll get her…in a sec."

"She's not the _mail_, Quentin. You have to hold her."

_Shit._ "Fine." He held his arms out and did some interpretation of limp jazz hands as signal for her to drop the child in his ill-prepared care. Surely sensing his inadequacy, Maggie gave them hell just trying to settle her in his arms, attempting perfect-ten high kicks at his face. By the time he got her feet to stay she had already made a wild grab for his nose and was now holding it hostage. For ransom, probably.

"Ow, she's…"

"I know."

He hadn't been prepared to fall in love.

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On a not-so-idle Sunday, then, Kay was croaking out the tonally-deaf version of an old song her mother liked to sing for her when she was still a dirt-nap babe. The television, as per usual, chatted away ad tedium in the background. Quentin had been out on mission for over an hour now, probably forced into a price-check on the diapers he had so desperately wanted to pretend were lumberjack tools or something else a man would rather be caught buying. _Men_, she thought.

"_When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, what will I…_"

So wrapped up in her own musical stylings (and Maggie, of course), Kay missed hearing the first faint rings issue forth from their house phone. Still singing, she made her way to the receiver on its fourth ring.

" – _I be pretty, will I be rich, here's…_Hello?"

"Kay, I need you to keep Ma – " _Bzzz._

"Aggie? The reception's – "

" – for me. There – papers – tomorrow."

"What? I can't hear you, the phone line's not – "

"Check the blanket. Blanket – hide it. Please."

"What blanket?"

"I'm sorry." _Click._

"Aggie?"

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"We can't wait on this anymore."

"Quentin, we don't even know if she's really gone."

"But the papers arrived three days ago."

"It says to wait a month. In case they reappear."

He paced about in anticipation of some sort of absolution, finally settling for: "I don't like this."

Kay sighed. "We might hear from her again."

"What the f – " He eyed the child carefully before starting again, in whispers. "What the hell kind of sick business is this? What exactly are we, anyway? Her babysitters? We can't just sit around waiting to see if she croaks before we..."

"It says if we don't hear from her in a month – "

"Then Maggie…"

"Is ours."

He shook his head. "I just don't like this."

"Me neither."

"Why us? Why'd she choose us?"

Kay paused for a moment, lavishing a soft glance at the sleeping baby before leveling her husband with a look of clairvoyance. "She must've known we'd need this."

He nodded, grimly. "Did you ever figure out that blanket business?"

For the first – but certainly not last – time in her life, she lied to her husband:

"No."

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Though she would never have reason recall it again, August 14th of 1980 turned out to be a momentous occasion for little Maggie. She would not turn three months old for another three weeks, but this day marked the first of many days she would just be another normal kid in yet another boring family. On this very particular day, Quentin Cera finally allowed himself to become a real father, shopping with (some level of) ease in the baby food section of their local market. This time there would be no price-checking.

For her part, Kay Cera decided to give up on that pipe dream of marrying a competent gardener and instead spent this day (of many days to come) turning loose the packed and pebbled soil in her front yard. For a lemon tree, perhaps, as she thought happily of lemonade stands and grubby-faced smiles on the laughing children of alike happy families, all un-alike in their own ways. She didn't want to think about the ways people were different, because she never wanted to discover that her own love might be inadequate in harboring some unhappy shortcoming that only biology could rectify. Kay had, quite ironically, stumbled upon the universal insecurity of parenting without realizing its commonness. In this, with each passing day – sometimes hour – she wondered when white lies and avoidance would tumble toward exponentially increasing half-lives of tragic dishonesty. She tried not to think about it.

On this most particular of days, Margaret Lisa Payne, daughter of Agnes Rocher and Thomas Payne, would become Maggie Lisa Cera, the soul(sole)-child of two well-intentioned adults still bewildered by a sick twist of fortune designated to make their lives very different and ever the same.


	2. Lisa vs the Maggot

Disclaimer: All storylines/characters that have appeared in "Chuck"-verse up until this point (publish date) are not of my creation and belong to NBC. All others (storylines/characters) are 100-percent figments of my (possibly) terrifying imagination.

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Maggot was a particularly tenacious creature.

Of course – that is, for those who believe in the truth of names – she'd have to be. It started as a leering nickname back in elementary school (third grade, probably, when children began a lifelong education on the benefits – i.e. 401K, health insurance, cold cash – of cruel competition), a nickname whose origins were (rumor had it) not unjustified; it aptly described some tiny, pale-faced critter whose modest stature did little to minimize the impending gawkiness of pre-pubescence. Childhood malice festers on such victims, so eager are little children to try on their training wheels of injustice that their microcosm of contemptible bullying just about proves that, in the end, Darwin will out-survive us all. That fit little bastard.

So when Kathleen Rupp – Kat, they called her; clearly a misnomer because her playground etiquette more closely resembled that of the blood-sucking chupacabra – approached this small-framed girl for target practice, it began something like this:

"Hey Maggot, are those maggots in your lunch? Huh, Maggot?"

Unperturbed, the target in question craned her neck so as to level her larger opponent with a well-rehearsed glare.

"What, cat got your tongue?" Kat snickered, then paused for a breather. She was suddenly struck by the perfect pun in her own insult. Unplanned brilliance was clearly her forte. But little Maggot didn't miss a beat:

"And what would you be doing with my _tongue_? That's really gross, Kath-reen."

The crowd _ooh-ed_, fearing for the worst when faced with a dangerous lack of comeback from the aforementioned blood-sucker. This had happened before. And, sure enough, in the next moment Kat had launched herself at the straggly-haired little girl, hoping to at least claw her way to victory (a jungle cat after all), but what happened next was certainly unprecedented. Little Maggot, with the instinctive alacrity of someone accustomed to making good use of a God-given brain, stepped aside and let her nemesis endure the rough landing, a landing made historic by the collision with a tether-ball pole on her way down. The spectators didn't exactly cheer (they knew better than to take sides), but even in the black-and-blue aftermath Kathleen Rupp sensed the first tittering of a tide-change.

Yes, Maggot was a tenacious underdog, and she had certainly won this particular battle. Too bad the yard teacher felt differently.

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"Again, Maggie? A-_gain_?"

Because she was well-versed in the rules of rhetoric, Maggie Lisa knew when to keep her mouth shut. Adults always had a way of asking questions that were not meant for responses – they could be so ridiculously redundant sometimes. Moments like these, when she was faced with the inevitability of punishment, she remembered that there were good talkers, and then there were _smart _ones. She absolutely desired to be the latter.

"The girl's got a bruise the size of a grapefruit."

"Sorry, Aunt Kay."

"Maggie…"

"But, um, to be fair, her head was already pretty big." Crap-nuggets; _definitely_ should have stayed quiet.

"Ohhh, my mistake."

Sensing sarcasm but still wanting to be polite, Maggie muttered a mellow, "That's okay."

"Are you _kidding _me?"

Tricky, but undoubtedly another rhetorical question. Maggie decided to lay low for a bit.

Although Maggie Lisa had never been much of a fighter, trademark accidental victories still seemed to follow her wherever she treaded. At just age fourteen, it would be the eighth (maybe more, but who's counting?) time someone she hated was conveniently injured – again, not _specifically_ of her doing, but her aunt (and instructors) seemed to suspect otherwise. Still, there was no sufficiently condemning evidence; she'd learned a lot about that from following the O.J. Simpson trial. Not that what she did – or didn't do – could be remotely comparable to what _he_ did…or didn't do.

"Quentin, it's your turn."

Her uncle peered ever-so-carefully out from one side of his book, too small and clutched much too close to his face to conceal anything. Maggie tried for eye-contact; only he could save her now. He was, rather unfortunately for her, a piss-poor wingman and she usually ended up worse off for his clumsy moral support.

Now he cleared his throat, generating a dry, grating noise before: "Um…what?"

"Talk to her, Quentin."

He turned his full attention on Maggie, finally catching her frantic attempt at eye-contact; her telepathic efforts were finally answered with: "Well, um, Maggie…"

"Yes?"

"You know your aunt doesn't like violence," he began, adding (but only after a death-glare from his wife), "…and neither do I."

"Yea."

"So that leaves only one question." He paused for effect. "Was it still worth it?"

"Quentin!"

"Totally."

Kay was almost seething with some variation of (dark) purple-rage now, clearly vexed by the less-than-educational repartee occurring between her husband and the child they were _supposed _to be enlightening.

"She was big, too," Maggie added, with not a little pride in her voice. "But I was more quick."

"_Quicker_, you mean," Quentin corrected her. Grammar was very important in this household.

"You're giving her a _grammar _lesson?" Beside herself with desperate frustration, the older woman had begun to froth excitably at the mouth; the beginnings of what some might consider an epileptic fit. Maggie recognized the danger signs and quickly clarified:

"I didn't hit her. I just ducked. Honest." She paused in search for the right words to round out her explanation, finally uttering a modest, "Cross my heart, hope to rot. Stick a needle up my b– "

"We get it." Kay stalked into the kitchen, having thoroughly given up any hopes of discipline, and thusly missing two very crucial fist-pumps of victory synced quite simultaneously to her departure.

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Maggie's first word happened the day after she became one year young. Neither of her parents expected it; they had collectively read enough baby books to know that no _ordinary_ child would begin yapping until at least its fourteenth month. Oh, the Ceras knew all about means and medians and standard deviation – among their parental repertoire had probably been an 80's equivalent of _Statistics for Dummies_ – so they reasonably deduced that any baby burped under their very suburban roof should never aim to be anything but comfortably standard.

"Kay," she had gurgled.

Once again, their comfortable world would give way under the weight of the extraordinary. Naturally, they first debated over the literary significance of this word. Kay beamed (alright, she gloated) at what she believed to be the first of many occasions that her child would inadvertently choose her as the unequivocal favorite amongst numerous parental units in the home. Quentin objectively objected; _obviously_ the child had been attempting to answer a question he posed only moments earlier – "How do you feel about the current political administration?" – and her response ("o-_kay_") directly signified polite detachment and careful analysis – the very trappings of a prodigious future political analyst.

Eventually, however, the legal guardians held off on endless debate in order to discuss the trajectory of Maggie's upbringing. Given the cryptic (and confusing) manner by which they came to be parents, it would have been practically sound to curb – or altogether bypass – any talk (now that "talking" was imminent) of Maggie's _real _parents. But both Kay and Quentin felt this path of least resistance would, sooner or later, only create more plot-holes to mend; children could be relentlessly intuitive that way. Besides, Quentin had remarked, he didn't think he could face their child knowing he was deliberately deceiving her. What kind of a life would that be, anyway, to always be lying about something?

To this, Kay had no response; she had her own, very separate, reasons for wanting to be upfront with Maggie about her parentage. Despite the accidental estrangement between her and Aggie, Kay had – and still – cared for her good friend; nostalgia for their one-time camaraderie made her hesitant to claim any maternal title for herself. Excepting the circumstances for which life gave her little choice, she refused to make dishonesty a habit. And – though she dared not keep too much faith – there was a part of her that still believed Aggie would return. Should that day come, Kay wanted to be sure she'd have a place in Maggie's life that would not be jeopardized (or replaced) by the prodigal mother. _Aunt_ Kay, she thought, had a nice ring to it. In any case, she _would_ be a mother; titles didn't always decide the parameters of love.

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Privately, she called herself Maggot also.

She didn't mind the name, really; it was an identity, and anything that put her on the map…well, she wasn't about to complain. Half the time she was running from it anyway, running from titles and definitions and useless boundaries, from people and places and things that strapped and stripped her down ad infinitum when what she really was, beyond all the individual parts of herself that seemed to continually collide within and implode into larger, epic traumas – each signifying that there would never be an end or limit to the ever-increasing multitude of fragmented selves and emotions she could discover – what she _really_ was, was…

She didn't know.

A chameleon maybe, the way she just knew that she _could_, if she wanted to, appear quite successful at most anything she put her mind to. It was a strangely absorbent mind, too, because her whole life – thus far – had been, on the outset, entirely too ordinary; it was her brain that saved her from freezing to death in the beautiful monotony. She had the kind of parents who, God-bless them, never forced her to be exceptional. Oh, they believed in her, and they (sometimes, depending on the amount of collateral damage) delighted in the aftermath of her quirks, but it was not from them that she learned to push her own limits. Rather ambitiously, she decided (at age eleven) the time had come for the public to view the culmination of her God-given gifts. In one private concert (tickets did not come cheap) for her aunt and uncle, she delivered a strong program whose highlights would include: Speed-singing through "Losing My Religion" (R.E.M. in ten seconds), a well-timed delivery of a self-written, R-rated "knock-knock" joke (Aunt Kay cut this segment short), and a gorgeous single-axel high-jump followed by a spectacular, face-first pratfall on the living room carpet.

Above all, she lived (and loved) to laugh.

Her uncle encouraged it too. In some ways, they were two peas in a pod, both preferring the simplicity of contentment to the puzzling complexities of being human – it was he who bought her her first paint-set (penance for not allowing her to come along on one of his paint-jobs) and took her to galleries and garbage dumps and amusement parks for inspiration. Art, he would say, comes from anything and nothing at all. On these little trips (so often just the two of them), he taught her to dream, with abandon, just so she might do more than exist…that she might do her fair share of _living_, too.

She taught him things too, like how to out-jam Queen and how to keep his face straight during times of severe ice cream brain-freeze; together, they shared secret smiles (and secret evils) and enjoyed life with the same kind of relaxed sensitivity. Quentin knew about childhood – that the days would only be all-too-short and, much as she may ache to grow up now, he hoped with every strum of his paternal heart she wouldn't become one of those adults without a youth to look back on with rose-colored spectacles. There were no real promises in life – maybe hers would be mostly smooth-sailing but somehow he doubted that; in any case, the only guarantee (and the best gift) he could give his child was a future nostalgia for simpler, happier times. This, this he could promise.

With her aunt, there was that shared appreciation for quietude; Kay was never much of a talker (except when motivated by rage), but all the same, she was the parent Maggie visited after a shitty day in school, after enduring the pettiness of high-school drama and competition that usually didn't work in her favor (despite clear combat abilities) – quirky, smart kids with an odd sense of humor didn't have a solid place in the scholastic setting; it didn't help, either, that puberty had hit her late and then, when it finally _did_ hit, turned her into some sort of nefarious mythical creature with stilts-for-legs and a pair of chesty sandbags that she had no fucking idea what to do with. Except tape up and pray to every brand of higher power that she might make it through one day without someone gawking at all the wrong parts of her without ever noticing _her_ at all. She tread a fine line in those days, never sure of whether she wanted to be seen for all the wrong reasons or remain altogether unseen – in the end, it wouldn't be her choice anyway. As paradoxical proof that she somehow belonged in the intimate political setting of the schoolyard, Maggot learned early enough that of all the things she could be, _awesome _would not be one of them.

She didn't have the assuredness to bother with most relationships of any kind in those days, but she did accidentally end up with a pretty good friend to swap notes (and lunch) with. Conversation, though, was usually limited; Maggot had little use for gossip and she didn't have much to say about herself – not the kind of "stuff" that people were interested to hear, anyway, so she mostly knew nothing about friendships and received no training on being a good friend, though she suspected that most people with friends didn't have the faintest clue on how to be a good friend either. And hey, if that didn't stop them.

It was during these days, especially, that she felt a cozy gratitude for her aunt's quiet company; there was never any pressure to speak, but just knowing that she _could_…well, that was plenty. On these days, Kay would brew some mysterious tea-like concoction and they'd munch on dipped madeleines (a tradition they religiously emulated ever since they started, but couldn't finish, that Proust volume) over a game – Battleship, probably – or an enjoyable read. Sometimes Maggie wondered if she made her aunt a little sad, because for just a fleeting iota of a second, she might catch a look from Kay that suggested a frightening storage room full of stories and emotions that she would never be fully privy to. And then it would pass, and she'd wonder if she was over-thinking again; always, she blamed the questionable tea.

Besides, her Aunt Kay had always been an enigma.

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There was an older photograph of Aggie that Kay left on her beside table, and no one else paid much attention to it anymore. It belonged to happier times, probably, since Aggie was still glowing from the kind of optimism that only youth and impending motherhood could produce; it had clearly been taken when she was seven or eight months pregnant. Every once in awhile Kay herself might look at it, but usually in more private moments that were always accompanied by an unsettling look of terror similar to one Aggie herself had in that last meeting so many years ago. Little Maggie, in her more pest-like stage of childhood, had once played with it, even pried it open from the back, only to find some hasty scribbling on the backside of the picture she could barely discern (and could certainly not yet read):

**_Soon may involve more  
__harmful messy gore.__  
Foolish, irresponsible choices form  
__bad truths. Blame indiscreet planning._**

**_(Common sense will tell us,  
that the power which hath endeavored to subdue us,  
is of all others the most improper to defend us.)_**

And then, at the bottom right corner:

**_Agnes Rocher, love is more than love_**

"Agg-niss," the little girl had giggled. It was funny name. "Agg-niss Wokker."


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